4 build prompts · 4 checks · run them in order and your second brain gains a long-session practice that survives compaction
Every move from the closing demo lives here, consolidated and cleaned up. Each one says what it is for and what you should see when it lands. Open a terminal in your second brain repo, type claude, and paste them in order. Rephrasing in your own words works just as well. If a result does not match, ask Claude what it did differently, fix that step, and keep going. This pack works best on a repo with some history in it: a folder or two of notes or documents, and the agents folder from earlier in the course.
A findings file and a progress file, created with their ritual attached. These are structured note-taking, the lever compaction cannot touch: a file is outside the window, never gets summarized, and is read back fresh when asked.
create findings.md and progress.md at the root of this repo. findings.md gets one line per thing we learn about this repo's contents, with the file path it came from and today's date. progress.md says where the current piece of work stands and what is next. add a rule to CLAUDE.md: read both files before answering any question about the repo, and update both before we stop for the day
What you should see: two new files at the repo root with a short header each, and a new rule in CLAUDE.md. The rule lives in CLAUDE.md on purpose: that file is re-injected from disk after every compaction, and a rule said only in conversation is not.
Exploration goes to a subagent with its own context window. It reads what it needs there, appends its findings to the file, and hands back a short report. Your window grows by the report and nothing else.
use a subagent to read through my notes folder and find every commitment, decision, or deadline mentioned. do all the reading in the subagent. append one dated line per finding to findings.md with the file it came from, and give me only the list
What you should see: a brief notice that a subagent is working, then a short list. Open findings.md: it has gained one line per finding, each with a path and a date. The files the subagent read never appeared in your session. If Claude read the files itself instead of delegating, say so and ask it to use a subagent.
One rule, written once into each agent definition, that makes failures carry their story. Four things every failure reports, and the two sentences that keep an empty folder and a timeout from wearing the same label.
update every agent in the agents folder with a reporting rule: when something fails, say what kind of failure it was (timed out, refused, empty result, could not parse), exactly what you tried, whatever you did manage to get, and one thing to try next. never report an empty result as if it were a failure, and never report a failure as if it were an empty result
What you should see: each agent file in the agents folder gains the same short rule. Read one: the four parts and the two "never" sentences should be there in plain words. This is the sentence that, in the case study, kept "no appeals handling found" from shipping in a client assessment.
A rule for any subagent that reads sources on your behalf: every claim comes back with its source, an excerpt, and a date, and disagreements come back as disagreements.
add a rule to CLAUDE.md for research work: whenever a subagent reports a fact from a document, it includes the document name, the exact excerpt, and the document's date. if two sources disagree, it reports both with their sources and dates and does not choose. syntheses are written in two sections, well supported and contested or single source, with every source kept next to its claim
What you should see: the rule in CLAUDE.md. From now on a research ask returns claims with their sources attached, and a conflict shows up as two dated lines instead of one confident number.
Fresh matters because CLAUDE.md and the agents load at session start. Close Claude Code, open it again inside your repo, and run these in order; the third one breaks something on purpose.
The whole point of the findings file is that a specific fact survives compaction. Prove it: fill the window a little, compact with a focus, then ask for a fact that only the file holds.
/compact focus on the findings work; drop everything else
what is the earliest deadline in findings.md, and which file did it come from?
What you should see: after the compaction notice, a specific answer with a date and a file path. The path is the tell: it came from the file, read back from disk, and never from the summary.
A fresh session has no memory of last week. The progress file is what makes that fine.
read progress.md and findings.md, then tell me where we are and what is next
What you should see: an accurate account of the work so far and the next step, in a session that has read nothing else. If progress.md is thin, that is the check working: the closing ritual in prompt 1 needs running at the end of each session.
The reporting rule earns its keep on failures. Point an agent at a folder that does not exist and at a folder that exists but is empty, and read the two reports side by side.
create an empty folder called archive at the repo root. then use an agent from the agents folder to look for any deadlines in the archive folder, and separately in a folder called old-notes that does not exist. show me both reports as the agent wrote them
What you should see: two different reports. The empty folder comes back as an empty result with zero matches and no retry suggested. The missing folder comes back as a failure with its kind (could not find, or refused), the path it tried, and something to try next. If both say "nothing found," the rule did not land; open the agent file and check the two "never" sentences are there.
Plant a contradiction and watch the research rule keep both sides.
create two short notes in my notes folder: one dated last year saying the vendor's renewal window is 60 days, one dated this month saying it is 90 days. then use a subagent to tell me what the renewal window is, following the research rule in CLAUDE.md
What you should see: both figures, each with its note name and date, and no single answer chosen. A synthesis that says "90 days" with no mention of the older note means the rule was skipped: ask Claude to redo it following the CLAUDE.md research rule, and check the rule is worded the way prompt 4 wrote it.
Back to the Module 08 lesson, or straight to the quiz.